Killing Fields

Date: 4 August 2002

Source: Carte Blanche

Presenter: Zaa Nkweta

Farmer Rob Stiles's video: 'Today's the 15th of June. Here's a kudu cow that we found. A few feet away we have an eland … left to die. It's quite disgusting.'

It's an atrocity of untold proportions and it's happening across the length and breadth of Zimbabwe. Reports leaked out of the country suggest that, since the land invasions began two years ago, over 50% of the country's wildlife has been destroyed.

Journalists aren't welcome here so, posing as tourists, we flew in by small plane to one of the worst affected areas – the Taretsi Conservancy - a 90 000 hectare grouping of game farms south of Bulawayo.

Rob is at his wit's end.

'Not a day goes by when we don't have a poaching incident. It's not sustainable, the animal losses that we are having. We're trying to control it, but it's slipping away from us,' he says.

Animals poached on Buffalo Range farm in recent months include 28 impala, 16 kudu, one bush pig, one nyala, 36 warthog, two buffalo, one giraffe, three wild dog and a cheetah – and these figures are set to soar. The farm has been designated for resettlement and Rob has to be off the property by August 10.

This is dry country and farming is not an option here. There's little or no rainfall, the soil is poor and the grasslands too fragile to support cattle on any large scale. But it does support wildlife in abundance. Outside of national parks, the highest concentration of the country's wildlife is found here, on game farms in the south.

Well, that's the way it used to be.

Until last month this was prime mopani woodland. Today it's a commercial firewood operation. The new occupant of this farm has employed a gang of men with chainsaws to clear the land – and they are not pleased to see us.

Woodcutter: 'Why do they have those cameras?'

Guide: 'They're tourists, my friend.'

Woodcutter: 'Are you after something? What's the purpose of those cameras? You need to talk to us first, and know your agenda. How can we know that you are tourists? People have been beaten here.'

We didn't hang around to find out what that comment meant.

Not in my lifetime, or yours, will this woodland recover. And as invaders pour onto the farms the pattern is repeated over and over again. New plots are constantly allocated and literally thousands of acres of virgin grassland have been burnt, trees felled and property destroyed. And where are the animals? They are being killed – wholesale.

So abundant is the game here that an estimated 80% of all animals poached are simply left to rot in the snares. What was once a wildlife paradise is today a bloody killing field.

'We are arresting poachers – 20, 30 every month. Our children will not know any animal because there will be no animals in Zimbabwe,' says game scout J.

We filmed a man who had been arrested by J that morning. He's lived on the farm a year and has yet to raise a crop. His family is hungry, he says.

'There's nothing because the sun burnt everything. So because of hunger, there is no other alternative,' explains J.

Nonsense, says Johnny Rodriguez.

'We've got two different types of poaching – we've got the subsistence poaching, which is the normal people who don't actually get their daily food. But then you've got the commercial side, and the commercial side is quite harsh because there are a lot of people involved, and a lot of people are making money at the expense of the wildlife,' he says.

As chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force – a national anti-poaching unit – he knows what he's talking about.

'There's officials involved – government officials, police, national parks,' he says.

Take the bush meat trade for a start, which is highly lucrative. This isn't subsistence poaching. We filmed men who had been caught with an eland, a warthog, a kudu and two waterbuck between them. Sold door to door, it will earn them good money.

Nothing is spared – a reported 26 elephant have been poached in Kariba and Wankie (Hwange) this year, and rhino are regular targets. A recent upsurge in the rhino horn market in Asia may well explain why.

And we're not just talking illegal poaching here – sanctioned by government, local authorities are issuing Zanu-PF militia with hunting permits for rations.

'The permits are handed to these guys, and the guys just walk in and do what they like,' says Johnny.

They're licensed to kill – and they do.

'The amount that are killed and snared and shot and whatever the case is, is completely out of hand. You won't believe it,' says Johnny.

We came across a female giraffe who was caught in a snare above the left knee. The wire has cut right to the bone and she's finally succumbed to the infection raging inside her.

Too weak to move, she hasn't eaten or drunk in days. In a race against time, the men know they have to get her to her feet if she is to survive. She tries valiantly, but she simply doesn't have the strength and they make the decision to put her out of her misery.

For countless farmers like Rob dealing with the crisis has become all-consuming. His days are spent coordinating patrols, or out in the bush with the scouts, hunting down poachers and their snares, and the animals caught in them.

'If the animal's caught round the neck strangulation takes place quite quickly,' says Rob. 'But it's when it's caught round the limb or the waist when death can be particularly slow.'

And painful … We joined them on a routine patrol and found a warthog with a snare around its throat.

'You can see the noose has cut right in … and he hasn't been able to eat. You can see he's been trying to get grass. There's maggots in there… terrible agony,' says Rob.

'I feel so negative[ly] because it's part of our environment, part of our animals and part of our jobs,' says ranger Charles S.

But his concern goes beyond his job: 'This one [animal] brings foreign currency from outside our country and is part of our heritage to our children.'

A grim heritage indeed. Charles has caught a poacher red-handed, and the government anti-poaching support unit has been called in to arrest the man. They'll interrogate him and hand him over to the police. And this is where justice ends.

Scout David picks up the story: 'They take them to the police and they release them. Then the following day we arrest the same person, so it doesn't mean anything.'

Off the record, certain police admit to having their hands tied by orders from above. Above the police are the provincial governors, whose orders come directly from President Robert Mugabe. So lawlessness prevails and the hunters hunt with impunity.

And for the game scouts life is hell. They are constantly harassed, intimidated – even beaten by marauding gangs of poachers.

'My arm, broken by some poachers,' says David 'They came in the night when we were sleeping and they beat us.'

'They hit me with their fists, and sticks as well,' says Charles.

'Many of them, they fight when we find them in the bush … I am frightened, but even if I get frightened, what of the animals? Because I know if I flee, the animals are going to be killed more and more,' says J.

They are a dedicated band of men, but the odds are stacked heavily against them. Since the elections earlier this year, invasions have increased tenfold, and the results are devastating.

'Where we used to see trees and natural things is all damaged and it has ended up as a desert,' says Charles.

He agrees the Zimbabweans need land, but says it must be done 'with a good channel or a good order. If it is like this, it is so horrible'.

The government moved settler Aren Mbetsi onto the farm last year.

'He means to say that Zimbabwe belongs to blacks and not to whites,' explains Charles.

Look beyond the political rhetoric to see the farce that this is. Government is moving people onto land that is totally unsuitable for agriculture, and it's only a matter of time before the new settlers will have to move on – or starve.

'The land giving was done because of the presidential elections. They are still coming to invade the land,' says Charles.

Although no one would say it on camera, it's a widely held suspicion here that landless peasants are nothing more than pawns in a cynical manoeuvre to pave the way for the party elite to move onto the land.

Politicians and businessmen from nearby Taretsi town – the local MP, the district administrator, members of the police – have allegedly all acquired property on the conservancy. Just speculation, but perhaps this is what they are after.

Besides agriculture, tourism is Zimbabwe's biggest foreign exchange earner and the game farmers have invested substantially in developing this lucrative market. But if it's a slice of the tourism pie the ruling elite are after, they are too late – because the goose that laid the golden egg is dead.

This is Ron Newman's fifth stay at the bush camp on Buffalo Range.

'We've been seeing animals with snares on their legs. We saw a beautiful eland bull the other day with a snare around its neck. You come here to a beautiful place like this, and it's just devastated. In a few short years I cannot believe the difference.

He is not coming back.

'I act as a booking agent and send people over. I have a group of 10 people right now that are ready to come over on a photo safari and it's questionable whether they're coming or not. You know … what are they going to come to? Take pictures of a lot of burnt-out, cut-down trees?' he says.

The destruction defies logic – land is at the centre of the crisis and the injustices of the past need to be corrected. Everyone agrees on that. But this isn't about land – it's about politics and power and, when animals are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency, can one possibly call this justice?